No, I’m not offering a trip to Las Vegas; nor have I taken such a trip recently except in the metaphorical sense that I will allude to shortly. But my attention-grabbing headline is relevant.
All financial speculation is a gamble, whether it is the noble art of serious “investing” or the more “risky” (apparently, but I don’t believe it) pursuit of leveraged trading with spread bets or CFDs. Subtleties of risk management aside, if your chosen markets go up then you make money and if they go down you lose money… regardless of what kind of account you used to make the trade.
If you accept my argument that all financial speculation is a gamble, then you have two choices:
1) Have some fun gambling your own money, congratulate yourself if you win, and figure that you only have yourself to blame if you lose.
or
2) Give your money to someone else for them to gamble on your behalf, and pay them to do so.
Would you rather take a trip to Las Vegas yourself, have some fun in the casino, enjoy the complementary sandwiches, and hopefully make some money to boot? Or would you prefer to give your
money to someone else, pay their Las Vegas air fare and hotel bill, and let them enjoy the complementary sandwiches while gambling away your money? Of course you wouldn’t, so why would you give your money (and a fee) to a fund manager or financial advisor when you can go play in the exact same “financial markets” casino that they play in?
I know that some money managers are supposed “experts”, but how do you know you chose the right one? That too is a gamble. And while many investment “advisors” can boast a wall full of certificates (mainly in “sales” skills), you have one qualification that they don’t have… you care deeply about your own money.
To put all of this more bluntly, I figured out some time ago that…
I can lose my money just as well as someone else can (and probably will) lose on my behalf, so I might as well have some fun myself rather than paying someone else to have the fun for me. I might as well gain entry to the “financial markets” casino myself via one of these spread betting providers.
Now, I’m not advocating a devil-may-care attitude to financial speculation. Far from it. I personally take a more investment-like Position Trading approach as part of my Better Spread Betting regime, and I take risk management with the help of Stop Orders very seriously indeed. I look after the downside of financial speculation while letting Lady Luck take care of the upside. Hopefully, she will pay for my next trip to Las Vegas!
Subscribe to Better Spread Betting by Email (I won’t tell anyone else, and you can cancel anytime)
Disclaimer: this posting is for general education only; it is not trading advice.